I'm a big fan of the "Underworld" movies. It's hard to beat vampires in leather and trench-coats leaping from tall buildings and blowing away werewolves with handguns. But this cool concoction gets even better when you add a dash of character and story worth caring about. Star-crossed love has been a consistent theme in all three of the previous films, and two of those featured a pivotal romance between Selene, the ultimate werewolf killer among vampires, and Michael, the first vampire/werewolf hybrid in history. Underworld: Awakening opens a few months after the events of Underworld: Evolution. The existence of vampires and lycans (werewolves) has now been made public, resulting in a worldwide attempt to exterminate both species. Michael and Selene make hasty plans to escape and live in secret far away, but are captured in the attempt. Selene is frozen by scientists for experimentation and is freed 12 years later. She immediately begins looking for Michael, ...

Last time I brought up anything philosophical regarding "Skyrim", I was talking about the choice of religious views one can take in the Elder Scrolls world, and what my choice is as I play. This time, I have a political decision in front of me. There is a war going on between the Emperial forces and those of a rebellion known as the "Stormcloaks", and in order to see one of the major plot-lines of the game I have to choose a side to join. The Stormcloaks are fed up with the how things have been in Skyrim for hundreds of years. They believe Skyrim's High Kings have been nothing but puppet tools of the empire, and believe the status-quo should be forcefully overthrown. (Of course, they have a High King of their choosing ready to fill the empty seat as soon as the war is over.) On the other hand, you have the empire, the legal, rightful ruler of all kingdoms, who reigns from a far off land, removed from the struggles of Skyrim and taking them for granted...

As a fan of Fantasy Flight Games, I came across news in 2007 that one of their fantasy role playing games, "Midnight", was being developed into a movie. A TV pilot, to be exact. Written, Produced and Directed by Christian T. Petersen, the founder of Fantasy Flight Games. Looking at the promotional clips online gave me mixed feelings about what the final quality of the production would be like. And the fact that a game producer was doing all the creative heavy lifting could be awesome, since he would have complete control, but also terrible for the same reason, if he doesn't know how to make movies. The movie was passed up by all those considering it for going to pilot. Not a good sign. But nothing in the clips or trailers I'd seen told me this movie would be monstrously bad. (The first "Dungeons And Dragons" movie comes to mind in that capacity.) So I watched and waited until it finally came to DVD, and waited even longer until distribution made it ...